Magical realism - a yearning towards something invisible in secular society

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Magical realism suggests that reality is made up of both the empirical world we
can know through epistemology and quantifiable fact, and the more slippery concept of a
space that forms our ontological investigations. The admission of faith suggests an
expansion of the normalising force of empirical reality on identity, society and culture.
Magical realism functions in:

 …tracing the various strategies by which individuals and communities try – and
have always tried – to make sense of the world, magical realist fiction shows how
rationalism and science alone cannot adequately account for the human
experience of the world (Hegerfeldt 2002:64).

The bridge between the real place and intangible space that constitutes the human
experience of constructing meaning out of reality can be called faith. ‘Central to magical
realism is the validity of interior worlds of faith which blossom in everyday realities and
coexist with other available realities’ (Foreman 1995:296). Not only is faith required for
ontological exploration of the self, faith is what encourages the belief that there is a point
to envisioning something other than the current state of affairs